


Child of the Dark City

by Wecanhaveallthree



Category: Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:08:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23828875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wecanhaveallthree/pseuds/Wecanhaveallthree
Summary: The Ynnari have dared to challenge the Dark Muse in his own sprawling realm. There can only be one response.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 8





	Child of the Dark City

**CHILD OF THE DARK CITY**

_‘We are born asking why.’_

* * *

Revenge.

That’s what it always came down to, in the end.

Someone did someone else a bad turn. The details of the offence were hardly relevant. You could cut down a whole family line, murder it root and stem, and find no retribution knocking at your door. Break an otherwise unimportant plate by purest accident, and create a lifelong nemesis. The key to understanding was in _value_ , and that was personal, hidden by choice or consequence. There was a lot of truth to that old saying: you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.

Were there any species in the galaxy who understood that better than the Drukhari?

Khanryr wouldn’t have been where he was if someone hadn’t lost something precious to them. Not in the cosmic sense, for he knew very well what path he had walked in his life to come to his current position. The immediate.

Steam swirled and danced, forming clouds and lattices. Shapes that tugged at the mind and diverted the eye. Condensation layered every surface of the back-hall. Droplets tracked down a chequerboard mosaic of chipped marble and cracked obsidian tiles. Liquid pooled in the imperfections, fluting down seams between solid blocks. Khanryr could evade those. His Incubi war suit dampened the tread of exotic metal on simple stone or through any liquid. Not from above, though. No member of Commorragh’s mercenary caste was agile enough to dance between raindrops.

Not that it mattered. Let the water descend on his antlered death-mask as it would - like tears, like blood amongst the trinkets and trophies bound to the jagged bone. Let it fall upon the hollow-cheeked skull, let it gather in the vacant orbits out of which peered his own yellow eyes. Let it trickle and play in the pale white grooves and ridges of his armour.

That was the gift and the curse of the Incubi. Being among the only denizens of the Dark City who could separate their passions from their necessities. An ascetic among the excess.

The puddles rippled and overran into one another as another great cheer vibrated the back-hall. Once a temple to one or more of the forgotten pantheon, it had retained its acoustics and dramatics if not the touch of the divine. A sermon from the main chamber would carry to all parts of the building, via both architectural conceits and hidden amplifiers. Similar technology existed in the blood-pits of High Commorragh, the flesh circuses and auditoria. The apostasy was beyond complete, and yet, those orgiastic events had the air of ritual and praise to them all the same.

Khanryr sneered behind his mask. Oh, truly, none understood loss better than the Drukhari. The crude aping of their height, the dusty scrabbling of Archons and Kabals. All so determined to pretend that the golden age lived on in them, that the party would never end.

Anything to avoid reminding themselves of what they’d had.

That was why he was here. That was what it all came down to, after all.

The klaive, a jagged, two-handed blade of perfect form and balance, slithered from its sheath across the Incubus’ back. It made no sound. Not that stealth was a priority or even a challenge. Khanryr could have chanted his Shrine’s mantra of dedication at full volume. Nothing he did would overwhelm the roaring rhetoric that echoed through the halls.

‘They have built this city on your bones! The Kabals, the Black Rose, the Dark Muse!’ Stamping feet and howls of anger greeted the words. ‘They demand your pain and labour, your life and soul, yet never do you partake of that bounty! Never do you drink from that overflowing chalice!’

A few steps ahead hung a sheet of blue silk, emblazoned with a lithe golden rune, the arched brand of the Ynnari. Khanryr was close enough to hear the speaker’s natural voice.

‘Rise up, sons and daughters! We are vanguards of the Seventh Way!’

A long lunge distant, now, but Khanryr hadn’t ascended to his current rank by risk and chance. If he’d wanted the delicious uncertainty of a charge into unknown, unseen territory, he’d have put his talents to work in a Wych Cult. His pulse did not quicken. His pace remained even. He moved as an avatar of patience.

‘Fear not death, for the Whispering God will gather up our souls! The bleak science of the Covens cannot draw you back! She Who Thirsts wails in despair as your shining spirits ascend!’

The cacophony that greeted that rhetoric was almost a physical force. Sensitive as he was to powerful emotions, Khanryr could feel the naked _hope_ that poured out from the chamber behind the curtain. He had to reassess his initial judgement - this was not a small, spontaneous gathering of a few dozen. There would be hundreds of eager, desperate Drukhari hanging on to every word.

Few would carry weapons. Fewer still with anything that would be a credible threat. Some array of knives and shard-swords, a smuggled antique splinter pistol or three. No combat training. Nothing like the iron discipline of Khanryr’s own shrine. They were the pitiful cast-offs and dregs of the Dark City, after all. The only time they attracted attention was when the homunculi ran short on pirated flesh.

It was their only value, but it _was_ value. The wretches were the natural property and prey of their betters in High Commorragh. They existed for Kabal use alone, bartered - or discarded - on will and whim.

Oh, slave theft was common enough between Kabals, and little ever came of it. But this wasn’t a simple matter of shifting resources between the great players. This was a removal of value from the system itself, not the exchange of branded shock-collars. One could hoodwink the squabbling skin-barons. Even cheat the tithes and inspections. But the system _itself_ belonged to Asdrubael Vect.

Nobody stole from Vect.

Khanryr readied himself, behind the sheet, a steady grip on his klaive. The golden rune fluttered on the fabric. He crushed all emotion down inside the shrivelled cairn that was his soul. No anticipation of the kill. No pride in accomplishing a contract. No pleasure in the way the adoring masses would shift from awe to shock to pain and terror as he slew their leader…

Well. A _little_ pleasure.

The little people had dared to believe themselves protected, for the briefest moment. They had thought themselves safe. They had reminded the Drukhari of what it meant to be free. They had pricked the very conscience of Commorragh.

There was no more vicious an insult, no more audacious a rebellion. And that’s what it always came down to, in the end. A slight. A harm. A wrong done.

And then, and then, oh, the sweetness of revenge.

Khanryr tore away the veil.


End file.
